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“One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough.”
I have loved the introduction to John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy from the moment I first read it. It is striking, literary, feverish, obsessive, expensive, lyrical. The quote above is merely one sentence that is mine. Every sentence is mine to treasure, but that sentence is mine to hold onto. I feel it, I think about it, I reference it, I idealize it, and I have now memorialized it in the most unholy and banal of places: my blog. (Previously held in high esteem on my facebook profile.)
And now I’m living it out, but in reverse; I am unhappy about it. I have been all-consumed by work lately, unsatisfied with my own performance, leaving work knowing I have not done enough to make everything work, knowing enough hasn’t been done to make changes for the students. They are still pitifully behind where they should be, and it seems that no amount of magical happy time or two hours in my classroom will change that. Who can say. (Period purposeful. No question there.)
I have taken to working at home more than usual lately. I make phone calls to students. I make phone calls to parents. I make worksheets I don’t use. I make powerpoints I only have time to use half of. I ineffectually worry. I pace. I race my mind through series of useless, effortful, pointless imaginations of the next day and the day after. I wonder how/why/when/where things will happen when the next day comes.
It was like that last year as a first year teacher, but this year is not marked by the worry of the scope of movement in class. I am too confident to worry about that this year. This year is also not marked by the dread of last year. I have no class I truly am unsure I will be able to control during the day. I have longer periods and shorter periods but that is only because of the schedule of the day. I have easy classes and trying classes. Those things never change no matter the situation. (What would suburban teaching feel like?)
What also never seems to change are the students who fell behind years ago and never seemed to make progress towards academic success again. Those boys are what I worry about now. Those are the ones I cannot forget. They are taking all my time and energy. I have lost all focus.
Well, they don’t take up all my time. The guys on the other end of the spectrum take up a lot of energy as well. On top of my two preps, the independent reading tracking, the lesson plans, the alignment templates, the unit plans, the tests, the assessments, I am now asking for more work in concern that the smartest we have are being dumbed down by my teaching to the middle (and sometimes lowest) common denominator. Thus, those guys and I will be reading a book all our own. I hope that goes well. It’s going to be Slaughterhouse-Five, and I’m hopeful. There are only four or five guys I’ll be doing it with. I am excited about it.
It will be very low stress, as long as the proper amount of prep is put in ahead of time.
I’ve been surfing Dave’s ESL cafe. I’ve been thinking about Alex. She has her certification in ESL now, and why don’t I try that track. It might be a nice change. There are so many questions about what will happen next year, and where I will go, and I am only keeping my options wide open, thrown open, easily available.
Life brings on that most difficult decision The Clash knew so well.
I think the word I hate the most is “conversate.” It’s not a word, but people seem to think it is. I hear it from everyone every day, and on occasion, it even pops out of my mouth when I’m talking to my students, and I hate myself a little bit more. I’ll be giving instruction, like “after you’re done silently reading you may turn to your partner and work through the guiding question. This isn’t a time to conversate about your lives, this isn’t a time to avoid work, this is a time for you to get your work done in class…” And as I’m standing there I know the students aren’t questioning me and the words I use (the ones they understand) and so I realize that whenever I use a word like conversate I am just encouraging the use of words I do not like.
This, however, is entirely out of character. On any other given day you will find me extolling the virtues of the English language, and how malleable it is, about how its evolution is still going on to this day and will continue to change and grow and morph in the years beyond. I will mention how google has now become a verb that means to search, and turns of phrase like “status update” are making their way out of the internet world into the human world. My students will listen and not really understand (a) what I’m saying, or (b) care why I’m saying it, but I say it nonetheless.
But, starting with “conversate”, things have been going to far.
As I was working with my students on their projects this past Friday, I had them divided into the students who had chosen not to make a presentation, and the students who had chosen to make a presentation. As I get to Malik (not his real name) I ask him what clips he will be using for his presentation, and he says he doesn’t want to make a presentation.
“Why?” I ask. “Didn’t you realize you chose one of the two options that required a class presentation?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want to do no presentating.”
And I’m all for the malleability of the English language, but making up the verb “presentate” is going a little far ijn my estimation. Can we not just converse and present? Must we conversate and presentate?
I swear, as much as I appreciate the descriptive linguists who marvel in the changing shape of English today, what is bothering me even more is the fact that there are already words, shorter words, easier words, simpler words, for the words people are making up today.
And while is makes sense to turn:
- estimation into estimate
- education into educate
it does not make so much sense to turn
- conversation into conversate
- presentation into presentate, or
- salvation in salvate
Although I might be wrong. It could be salvate will be in the dictionary before the year is out, but I’m not willing to use it for the rest of my life. (And I’m going to try and avoid conversate and presentate, too!)
I bought Phoenix’s It’s Never Been Like That a year late. When I graduated from college at the beginning of May, I found myself, for the first time, subletting my apartment for the summer, packing up all of my worldly possessions from college, and driving back home for the last time. The album came out in 2006. I picked it up in 2007, about one month before I flew to Philadelphia to begin my two year commitment to Teach for America.
It’s Never Been Like That was that perfect fresh blast of soft and pop music I needed for the summer. I spent many nights driving down the canopy roads and thinking about the choices I had made up to that point, the choices that had gotten me to being back home in Tallahassee before I started a job I had no qualifications for, a job where people just told me, “It’s so tough. You have no idea”–all the while Phoenix was playing in the background. (So was MGMT. But what self-respecting semi-hipster indie-fan didn’t have them spinning all summer long?) I waited in Tallahassee for almost two months.
Look out--look at, look at me Calm down calm down I said to myself this time
The nervousness of my impending future/disaster (…it’s so tough…) played in my head. It reeled over and over again. Possibility after awful possibility played in my head as I permuted the possibilities of the future my decisions had led me to the former here and now.
Where to go I had no idea about it Most of the people do, they're only doing just fine I don't wanna stay in place no more, see Ain't doing well, well, well, I'm only doing just fine
Then, all of a sudden, I was in Philadelphia. Phoenix was still playing on my iPod, and I was desperately listening to anything to calm my nerves. I was aloof in a place where people weren’t allowed to be aloof. I was in TFA. As a requirement you are asked to be social all the time, to participate, to be active, to meet people, to schmooze, to engage, to question, to discern, and to do a whole host of other verbs. I walked in the crowd, headphones in. No clue where I was going, but confident the group would get me to where I needed to go.
Second to none, I wouldn't seriously get involved in a thing Bored of all the talking, you know it didn't change much I doubt your intentions are to make me feel any better today I even doubt tomorrow will be as easy as it was
I was ambivalent about TFA. I didn’t exactly buy their sales pitch once I became a member of their organization. I doubted what they were really about, I didn’t want to get involved with them much, and it seemed as though the more I rejected them, the more they rejected me. (NOTE: This is only tacitly true. Once I, later, began accepting them, they became more accepting of me.)
It started all in early September When my godgiven little became a lot older
The rest, as I shall say, is history. Last September came and went, and here I am a year older. Phoenix is still with me. And now they have a new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, to sustain me and relate to my life. When the lead singer Mars hits it, he hits it right.
The question is, which lyrics will define this year?
This really exists. I can’t believe this really exists.
My only question now: Why did my idea for Slasher Sloth vs. Mutant Llama get rejected?
In teaching there’s a term (and I guess in life, but I never used the term in life before teaching) we like to use when we go off our regularly scheduled plans to talk about things other than our plans. It’s called a teachable moment. I’m still teaching, but by golly it’s not the nouns and verbs and essays I had planned on that day.
My favorite teachable moment this year came on the second or third day of class this year when we were talking about my big motivational quote I have hanging above my board. It’s from Gladiator (duh!). “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” I like it because I always want my students to be thinking about the long term impact of their lives and actions, and what they want their long term results in life to be. So we were talking about people in history who have echoed in eternity, and students were talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, and all of the African American heroes you would expect them to grow up admiring and being told they should admire them.
And then a student mentioned Hitler.
To preface: I’m no longer interested in having the leadership retreat discussion of “Was Hitler a great leader?” because we all know the answer we’re supposed to end with, but my answer will always be he was a terrible leader, unable to achieve an end goal because he was ultimately undermined by his unrealistic expectations of what he could do, how he could accomplish it, and how it would be received worldwide. Moving on…
And then a student mentioned Hitler, and how Hitler is still a large figure in the world’s conscience, and how he did terrible things, and how he’s still known for what he did to the Jews, and how people still detest him and compare people they really hat to him, and how if it weren’t for the brave men who assassinated him would go down in history for killing such a horrible man who still echoes in eternity.
Good. Wait, what? Uh…
This is what I was thinking as he was talking. I had to take that pause all bad teachers have to take when they just don’t know what to say. And then the long delayed response: “Did you see Inglourious Basterds?”
“Yeah!”
“You know that never happened, right?”
“Huh?”
And that was that. I was off on a historical tangent and most students had no idea what I was talking about, and those who did know what was going on did not seem interested in what I had to say. But regardless, I had my fun moment explaining the real history of the end days of Hitler. Thank goodness I’d seen Der Untergang and had a vague idea of what was accurate and right. (By the by, a very solid movie, though slightly overrated in the spectrum of IMDb-hood because I’m not sure if the film is supposed to shock in how human it’s portrayal of Hitler is, or surprise by the reality of his end days situation, but either way, a very solid film, amazingly acted, and well directed. Moving even. Enlightening definitely. Interesting, you can be assured.)
I’ve also been trying to be more motivational this year, so every time we read something I always remind my classes about how reading anything makes up smarter. It wasn’t until about three weeks when I was called out on that fact by a student. I didn’t have much of a response, but I did get a chance to talk about Genie. You know, the girl who is in every general psychology textbook since the 1980s under the section about brain elasticity and language acquisition. Genie was the girl who was tied to a toilet for most of her first 13 years by her parents. Fed, but rarely interacted with.
I spin reading and writing and a practicable and developing skill that must be constantly engaged and honed. Some guys genuinely seem to buy it. Some don’t. Some have never heard an approach like that before. They were never given a reason to read before. They never learned about malleable intelligence, were never told that smart is a thing you can get, isn’t a thing you are. It surprised me they had never been messaged information like that before.
It made me feel frustrated that the young students trapped in West Philadelphia aren’t given much of a reason for anything, least of all school. Least of all reading and writing. Or math. They come into high school depressed about having to take out another book, having to read another story, having to go over the multiplication tables that they’ve been going over for the last 8 years and still don’t understand.
Favorite thing said to me by a student so far this year: “Mr. W, I’m not trying to snitch or nothing, but people be calling you Harry Potter.”
I watched a movie last night. I was called Raise the Red Lantern. Planning to watch only the beginning because I had Saturday School the next morning, I began the movie only to know after the first moments I would not be able to watch the movie in more than one sitting. The movie is transfixing, and if you do not find it absorbing from the beginning, it will probably be a movie you will not enjoy.
It begins with a face, a beautiful, angry, and sad face of a young Asian woman (a recent dropout from the university after her father’s death) that is discussing her marriage possibilities with her–to be labeled later–stepmother. The dialogue is spoken dispassionately from the actor’s mouths, but the words and facial expressions are anything but. Thanks to youtube, the clip of the first scene is below.
NOTE: There is also a trailer on YouTube, but I’m of the opinion hat it reveals too much. I think it might be better to come into the movie knowing little, for it is not what will happen in the movie, but how it will happen in the movie that is most amazing.
Back to the summary: The young girl is named Songlian, and she is wedded to an obviously wealthy man. She walks to his estate, and the main house butler is surprised she did not wait for the wedding caravan. The first hint that her independent, educated spirit is not in keeping with the traditions of the household.
As she is led through the estate, she is brought to the master’s first three wives: First Mistress, the eldest of the wives and mother of the eldest son–she is never with the master throughout the movie; Second Mistress, a kind woman with a sweet face, but a woman who is noticeably growing older; and Third Mistress, still young, still beautiful, and a former opera singer. Our heroine is no longer Songlian, but the Fourth Mistress. Along with meeting the other wives, she is also introduced to the ancient customs of the ageless household. Most importantly, the red lanterns. The mistress the master chooses to sleep with is honored by having red lanterns hung in her section of the house estate. She also chooses the dinner menu. She treated better by the household servants. She is the woman in favor.
The rest of the movie is a battle of emotions between the women. The master is often heard but not seen with any clarity. The only male characters are the house butler, his aide in hanging the red lanterns, and the family doctor. In thinking about this movie, the first adjective that sprung to mind was great. The second adjective was feminist. I’m not sure if it is a feminist movie, but for being a movie about the loves, betrayals, emotions, and actions of women who are pitted against each other to gain favor of the master and birth him a son, it certainly tends in that direction. It is also based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong. It is clearly a story about women. Beyond that I will not say because while it may be a story bout women, I’m not sure it is a movie entirely about women.
It is definitely a movie about a house. The film is almost entirely restricted inside the walls of the house with the exception of the first few minutes. The house stands as an unchartable piece of architecture, seen from the roof to extend over the horizon in a maze of pathways and stairs and secret rooms. Each room of the different mistresses is patently different and lavishly decorated. The house acts as a character of its own, lived out most closely by the actions and reactions of the First Mistress–dominated by custom, lacking emotion.
For a movie dominated by red it is blatantly lacking in sensuality. The sex is custom and formality. A demand of the master, treated like a competition to be won by the mistresses. It is an exceptionally beautiful film, and I cannot praise it highly. It is immediately a movie I knew I wanted to own. It is captivating. Beyond that personal reaction, it is technically tight. The actors are entirely controlled and (re)act with as much honesty and energy as I expect in real life. The cinematography is exceptional. The direction: flawless.
Visually stunning, entirely controlled.
The time is now. School is a go for the year as of tomorrow.
And the only song I seem to be listening to is….
It’s fine. It’s all fine. Is it worrisome I’m relating to a song who’s chorus rings “When will my summer ever come?”?
I think yes! And that’s OK!
On the other hand, I think it’s a great song. Just maybe not the song I should be listening to as the year starts.
I don’t think I’ll surprise anyone when I admit that I require a “hobby.” Over the years these hobbies have vastly varied, some have stayed with me as regular pastimes, others have fallen by the wayside. I hope I’m not the only one with this preoccupation with preoccupation. I need to be occupied. Luckily, I’ve found a job (teaching at my school–because I know teaching at other schools does not look like mine) that satisfies the constant need to do something. It’s obsessive. Let’s reflect.
Probably the earliest hobby I had was
- Building Dams – The drainage ditch that runs behind my house had a surprisingly consistent flow. Therefore, it became the bulk of my homeschooling day to try and make sure that ditch was appropriately dammed. Sadly, after several hundred attempts over several years, there was no success. I have not revisited this activity since 6th grade. I think that means I’m not going to do it again, but you never know. Right?
- Knitting/Needlepoint – I’m going to blame my mom entirely for this one. After having taught for a year, it’s like her emergency lesson plan one week was “SWBAT knit and needlepoint” and my sister and my-home-schooled-self were the student subjects. Sadly, this is a very useful hobby for keeping your hands occupied while your mind needs to be busy, and it is one I have more or less retained in one way or another. Sadly, teaching is not a profession that lets this happen. Miss Marple clearly was not a teacher (go to 4:15).
- Reading – I teach English. I read constantly. I read mediocre to amazing student essays constantly. I read 9th grade curriculum aligned texts repeatedly, and over summer I read the occasional personal Big Person Novel. (I can’t call them Adult Novels because that just sounds dirty.) This summer was a reading extravaganza: The White Tiger (awesome), Ragtime (stylistically astounding), American Pastoral (crazy entertaining), Beloved (finally got around to Toni Morrison, and it was pretty good), The Known World (this really won the Pulitzer?), One Hundred Years of Solitude (books like this make me glad I can read), Cat’s Cradle (I love Kurt Vonnegut), Interpreter of Maladies (so good), The Caine Mutiny (apparently this is where Michael Caine got his stage name), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (very funny), American Gods (Neil Gaiman never disappoints). There were others, but if I can’t see them right now, I’m not going to bother trying to figure them out.
- Pie – I have never been much of a chef, and maybe it’s been the recent spree of Pushing Daisies I’ve been watching, but I have started making pies as a my new found hobby. This has to be the most satisfying hobby, and also the most expensive hobby I’ve taken up. And, I’ve met with surprising success. The Chocolate Raspberry Mousse was popular, both sweet potato pies were successes, the triple-berry pie was personally delicious, and the pear pie was eaten before I had a slice–which I’m assuming means “Tasty!” The only one that went sour was the Chocolate Mocha pie, but that’s because I really just have to start understanding that dark chocolate, dark coffee beans, and oreo pie crust, and dark brown sugar should never be used all together–there is such a thing as “too heavy.”
The only question now is: how long with pie-making hold out over the school year before work completely overtakes my desire for recreational baking.
It seems appropriate that my year is ending as it began, stressing with no great sense of urgency about materials for To Kill a Mockingbird.
And thus the year has come to an end. I’m still here. I feel self-deprecating about the success of my students. However, I am confident that they are in a slightly better place than when they started. However that might be, I know it was not only my work, but the work of the five other academic teachers the students had, and the two extracurricular teachers, the NTAs, the new Principal, the CEO, the office staff. It was everyone. I was a part.
Now I understand how first year teachers can be considered ineffective. I feel ineffective. I feel like unless I’m planning through the summer I will be ineffective next year. I feel a lot of things these days. But, with a paper to Ed Law looming on the horizon, with the parents coming in, with TTL duties beginning to expand, I’m doing my last work assignment: make a summer reading packet for the rising Juniors about To Kill a Mockingbird.
I’m working. I’m avoiding everything else. Except this. I’m not avoiding this. But that’s because I’ve been avoiding this all year long. I’ve been sucked into the idea that constantly working makes one a better teacher. Potentially true, but no less easy to live with.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I need an outlet for my normally hectic mind. Maybe I’ve learned to keep things in better. Maybe I’ve learned to suppress it entirely. Maybe I’ve learned to measure my words with a little more care than the day I began this job.
Maybe.
I’ve been gone fo ra long time. Mackenzie told me to keep writing because he regretted not, but I did not take his advice. Rather, I forgot my logon for this one day, and then I just moved on, and I forgot. But now I’m back.
And I’m still teaching.
Believe it or not, I’m still teaching. This is good news all around. My guys are occasionally still learning, and I’m occasionally still teaching content. It’s beauteous. (Is that a word? Ya? Nah?)
By the way, I love my guys. My students, my boys, are my life right now.
Because of the time contraints they put on me, I have very little time to update this business. But I will more often. The year is winding down, summer is approaching, everything is starting to come together and this next year I cannot wait for.
I’ll be back with mroe soon!
